COLUMN ONE : Cutbacks Push Poor to the Edge : The recession and an angry middle class have combined to bring about radical state welfare cuts. Those most in need are in danger of losing what safety net is left.

In years past, Della Morrison received $150 from the state welfare system to buy winter clothes for each of her twin boys.

Not so any more. Those days of largess are gone, a victim of Massachusetts’ huge budget cuts. During the biting cold of winter this year, she sent the boys to school without coats until she finally charged them on a credit card she could not afford to pay back. She also bought the coats out of fear.

“I had no choice,” she said. “I was afraid that if they continued to go to school without coats, someone might file a child abuse claim against me.”

Morrison is one victim in what amounts to a national squeeze play in which states are cutting back radically on benefits to welfare recipients.

The recession has hurt state finances at a time when an increasingly angry middle class is rebelling at spending more money on the poor.

Legislators, in turn, see their states’ welfare systems as increasingly costly operations that can, at minimal political expense, be cut back--in part because the recipients wield so little political clout. The upshot is that the poor, particularly the poorest of the poor, are in danger of losing what safety net is left for them.

Massachusetts is a more extreme example than most because of the severity of the cuts. But it is also true that other states--with California being the ultimate example--are trying to shore up their money problems by eliminating or severely reducing public assistance programs.

The impact can be found around the nation:

In Cleveland, social worker Lisa Thomas said the number of homeless in her facility had doubled over the last year because of budget cuts. On the South Side of Chicago, Roberta Caylen, 65, is the victim of cutbacks in the state medical program: She can only afford one of the two medicines she needs to alleviate the pain of the arthritis in her legs. Maryland has had deep cuts both in Aid to Families with Dependent Children and general assistance.

And at the Pine Street Inn, Boston’s largest homeless shelter, acting director Ralph Hughes anticipates that thousands more people in Massachusetts could lose their general relief benefits and, in turn, their homes in the coming months.

Already, he said, there is a marked increase in people who are “on the edge,” with just enough money to keep a roof over their heads, but coming to the shelter for their food, clothing and medical needs. More than 13,000 people who did receive benefits under the old Massachusetts welfare program have been found ineligible for the new one, with thousands more waiting to hear if they are eligible.

Hughes said the problems were exacerbated because programs are being shut down that would get people off the streets and back into their own homes.

“It’s creating homelessness and blocking the way out,” he said. “It’s a double whammy.”

Poorest of the Poor

Perhaps the bleakest portrait of what is happening came from a recent study by the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Center for the Study of the States in Albany, N.Y.

Last year, the report said, states made the sharpest budget cuts in 10 years in aid to the poor. It said that Aid to Families with Dependent Children will decline in 40 states. In one category of aid alone, the general assistance programs, more than 500,000 people will be affected by the reductions.

The report also said the cuts made in 1991 will predominantly affect those with little or no income besides government support. In other words, the poorest of the poor.

“By contrast,” the report said, “the large federal budget cuts in low-income programs enacted in 1981 primarily affected poor and near-poor families who worked or had other income besides their government assistance. It is likely the state cuts enacted this year in low-income programs will hit the very poor more sharply than any round of federal or state cuts in recent memory, including the 1981 federal budget cuts.”

The cuts caused New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, in a speech at Harvard University in February, to lambaste politicians for making the poor the scapegoats for their budget problems.

“The powerful, instead of confessing error and pledging to correct it, are deflecting the blame from themselves to the powerless: to the poor, to the child who just had a child, to the new immigrants.”

Advocates for the underclass say part of the reason the poor are being targeted is a change in how the poor are viewed.

“Since the early 1980s an attitude has developed in this country that if someone is poor, it’s very much their own fault,” said Father Fred Kammer, a Jesuit priest in Washington, D.C., and longtime advocate for the poor. “That thinking is prevalent among too many politicians.”

Help for the Needy

In some ways, this point of view is reminiscent of how the poor were dealt with in the early part of the century. In the years preceding World War I, historians say, the only significant movement to help the poor and oppressed was the Socialist Movement led by Eugene Debs, Kate Richards O’Hare and others who were seen as something of an oddity by mainstream America. The poor had virtually no safety net other than family support. Failing that, the needy were forced to turn to the local “poor house” for food and shelter.

In the wake of the Great Depression, calls emerged for a national welfare system as the way to avoid massive poverty, said Sar Levitan, the director of the Center on Social Policy Studies at George Washington University.

Help came on a nationwide scale with the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935--part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal package. The act created unemployment insurance, retirement benefits, aid to needy families and assistance to the disabled and blind.

The second great boost to the welfare system came with Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs in 1964, with major growth through the Richard M. Nixon years and, to a lesser extent, through the Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter administrations. Then came the election of Ronald Reagan and the major federal cuts in the welfare system.

Effects Intensified

Now come the state cuts of the ‘90s. With the continuing recession, ever-rising state taxes, a resentful and strapped middle class and soaring welfare costs, the effect on the poor is even worse than experts predicted a year ago.

The cutbacks are coming at a time when the number of people being classified as poor has risen dramatically as the recession forces up unemployment. Welfare costs also are on the rise, in part due to the recession but also because of inflation and the overall rise in the cost of living. Benefits have been adjusted to keep pace.

According to the U.S. Agriculture Department, more than 22.5 million people--one person in 10--are now on food stamps. That figure is up from more than 20 million in mid-1990.

In 1992, for the first time, nationwide Medicaid costs are expected to exceed $100 billion, well above the 1991 figure of $91 billion. The increases are due in large measure to laid-off workers who have exhausted their unemployment benefits, according to the American Public Welfare Assn., an organization that represents state welfare departments and administrators.

Nor is the outlook any better.

“I think we’re not going to see a reversal until state finances recover and I don’t think that will really happen for an extended period of time,” said Steve Gold, a co-author of the report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Center for the Study of the States.

Gold’s logic is simple enough. A recession means an erosion in a state’s tax base which, in turn, means either a cut in services, raising taxes or both. A recent report by the National Governors’ Assn. said that 31 states last year raised taxes by a record $15 billion. Even with that, drastic service cuts have been needed in most states to balance budgets.

Even if the recession should begin to dissipate, it could take months or even years for the recovery to be translated into state government funds.

“The real question is whether the welfare bashing and cuts made in 1991 will continue to escalate,” said Gold.

Among those states that have gone the furthest in eliminating or reducing benefits programs is Michigan, where an estimated 90,000 people have been dropped from the welfare rolls. But Gold said that the proposals by California Gov. Pete Wilson for welfare reform in his state make the 1991 cuts look “puny” by comparison and could be an impetus for more major reductions in other parts of the country.

“When something happens in California, it rises higher on the agenda in other places,” he said.

Wilson’s wide-ranging proposal would reduce family benefits by an immediate 10%, followed by another 15% cut if the able-bodied recipient has not found a job after six months.

Teen-age mothers would receive $50 a month if they stayed in school, but lose $50 if they dropped out. And they would only receive welfare if they lived with a parent or guardian, so long as the adult is deemed fit. An unwed mother who gave birth to another child would not receive extra aid. Families moving to California would only be eligible for benefits paid in their former place of residence for the first year.

Rules Affect Lives

Casey McKeever, a lawyer with the Sacramento-based Western Center on Law and Poverty, has challenged some of the underpinnings of Wilson’s proposal, saying, for instance, that it is ludicrous to suggest that welfare families have more children to increase their benefits. McKeever also said people do not come to California because of increased welfare benefits. He cited studies done in other states that showed that high welfare benefits are not a reason people relocate.

McKeever said he believed Wilson was more interested in increasing his own power over the budget process.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that there is a movement afoot to lay down rules that affect how poor people live.

On Jan. 21, New Jersey Gov. James J. Florio signed a legislative package mandating sweeping revisions in the welfare system, including a provision that made the state the only one in the nation to deny mothers additional payments if they have more babies. It also mandated that those on welfare with children over age 2 must obtain job training or other education.

But the state that last year made the most stringent cuts was Michigan, whose governor, John Engler, tried to balance his budget with deep cuts and no new taxes.

Engler defended the moves by saying that the state’s welfare system had been bloated to a point where people other than the truly needy were feeding at the public trough. Shortly after the cuts were made last October, Republican state Rep. David Jaye, a supporter of the cuts, suggested the jobless “can move to sunny California, to stylish New York; if they like winter sports, to Minnesota.”

Not only have thousands been cut from welfare rolls, but food stamps in Michigan have become a kind of second currency for the poor, as they have in other states as well. One woman, Velma Gordon, 52, said she had depended on a $144-a-month general assistance check from the state to pay the rent. With the cutbacks, she pays her landlord in food stamps she is still eligible to receive from the federal government.

“I’d rather give them my food stamps than be outdoors,” she said. “You’re not supposed to do it, but if they didn’t take them, we’d be in a vacant house or something and I’m too old for that. I can’t stand no cold.”

Father James McLaren, who runs an assistance program at the Episcopal Church of St. Paul in Detroit, said Gordon is one of the lucky ones. Her landlord takes the stamps at face value, while many others will only allow 50 or 75 cents on the dollar.

“I had hoped I would never see anything like the level of human suffering that is going on in this state,” said McLaren, whose program must turn away two out of every three people seeking help because of the overloaded demand. “It drives people to desperation.”

Middle Class Hurting

And the lines keep getting longer. Middle-class workers who have lost their jobs are standing in line for food stamps to help make ends meet.

“More and more people who are middle class are finding that they might not have something for the kids’ lunch tomorrow, especially those who have lost jobs in the recession,” said Dwana Pinchok, chairman of the Montgomery County, Md., Food Network. “What I see every day is people coming into my office wearing interview clothes . . . and now they need help.”

Times staff writers Robert L. Jackson in Washington, Amy Harmon in Detroit, Lianne Hart in Houston and Tracy Shryer in Chicago contributed to this story.

The Vanishing Safety Net

Legislators have found their states’ welfare systems are easy targets because recipients wield so little political clout. The upshot is that the poorest of the poor are in danger of losing what safety net is left for them.

Even though states raised more taxes . . .

Net change in taxes imposed by the states since 1985. For instance, in 1991, the states enacted tax legislation totaling $16.2 billion.

Figures in billions of dollars 1985: -1.3 1986: 1.1 1987: 4.5 1988: 0.6 1989: 3.5 1990: 9.5 1991: 16.2

. . . money to the poor declined, as measured in 1990 dollars:

Aid to families with Dependent Children payments for a family of four (Median state benefit in July in constant 1990 dollars): 1970: 739 1975: 635 1980: 552 1985: 483 1986: 492 1987: 481 1988: 475 1989: 453 1990: 432 Source: Family Support Administration and the Congressional Research Service, as cited in the 1991 Green Book, compiled for the House Ways and Means Committee.

Compiled by Times staff writer Lianne Hart